Iran Continues March Towards “Halal Internet”

This past weekend, Iran’s minister of telecommunications announced that domestic institutions including banks, telecom companies, insurance firms, and universities are now prohibited from dealing with emails that do not come from an “.ir” domain name. This means that customers who use foreign email clients such as Gmail, Yahoo!, and Hotmail will have to switch to domestic Iranian accounts, which are subject to Iranian legal jurisdiction.

UPDATE: Late last week, the FBI returned the seized server to the colocation facility that May First/People Link and Riseup shared. Yesterday, May First released video footage of the server's return. As we learn more details about the situation, we'll keep you posted.

The FBI is at it again -- executing broad search warrants, disrupting legitimate Internet traffic, and getting nothing in return.

Kuwait’s Information Minister, Minister Sheikh Mohammad al-Mubarak Al-Sabah, announced last week that Kuwait plans to pass new laws regulating the use of social networking sites such as Twitter in order to “safeguard the cohesiveness of the population and society.” The Information Minister’s announcement reflects growing panic over comments in social media deemed to incite the mounting sectarian tension between Sunnis and Shi’ites throughout the region.

Just a few months ago in United States v. Cassidy, a court smacked downa prosecutor's attempt to use the federal anti-stalking law to punish a man for criticizing a religious leader on Twitter. The court ruled that the criminal charges brought against the critic ran afoul of his constitutional right to free speech. Because the law violated the First Amendment as applied to that specific Twitter user, though, the court chose not to go a step further and decide whether the statute is unconstitutional as written, which EFF had argued in a "friend of the court" brief.